Sunday, August 3, 2014

Every story must be told in its time. Here is an update to The Little Match Girl, courtesy ofThe Guardian.

David Clapson was found dead last year after his benefits were stopped on the grounds that he wasn't taking the search for work seriously. He had an empty stomach, and just £3.44 to his name. Now thousands of other claimants are being left in similarly dire straits by tough new welfare sanctions.

We know that David Clapson was actively searching for work when he
died because a pile of CVs he had just printed out was found a few
metres from his body. The last time he spoke to his sister, a few days
before he died, he told her he was waiting to hear back about an
application he had made to the supermarket chain Lidl.

But
officials at the Jobcentre believed he was not taking his search for
work seriously enough, and early last July, they sanctioned him –
cutting off his benefit payments entirely, as a punishment for his
failure to attend two appointments.

Clapson, 59, who had diabetes,
died in his flat in Stevenage on 20 July 2013, from diabetic
ketoacidosis (caused by an acute lack of insulin). When Gill Thompson,
his younger sister, discovered his body, she found his electricity had
been cut off (meaning that the fridge where he kept his insulin was no
longer working). There was very little left to eat in the flat – six tea
bags, an out-of-date tin of sardines and a can of tomato soup. His
pay-as-you-go mobile phone had just 5p credit left on it and he had only
£3.44 in his bank account. The autopsy notes reveal that his stomach
was empty.

Consider the man and his life's arc:

She (the sister who discovered his body) is at pains to describe her brother as someone who had worked for 29
years, anxious to stress that he should not be seen as "scrounger". He
spent five years in the army, two of them serving in Belfast, 16 years
working for BT and another eight at other companies before he stopped
working to care for their mother who had developed dementia.

Soldier, longtime worker and family caregiver, yet these facets mattered not in a system that required compliance and performance.

Note that financial securitizations are non-taxed and private equity underwriters (PEU) keep their preferred carried interest taxation which makes their firms virtual nonprofits. Obviously, elected leaders believe these group's have earned and deserve the government's help.

I have seen so many people -- particularly those in their 50s - 70s -- taken apart by what has happened in their industry as greed has hollowed out the economy.
These are people took pride in their jobs and held themselves to this
invisible standard that we all just took for granted, but is being wiped
out.